


Was Hoping You’d Come Home (Don’t Care if it’s a Lie)

by superdino (crystalrainwing)



Series: Nothing’s Gonna Scare Us Now [2]
Category: Renegades - Marissa Meyer, The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, but only a little we can’t be making klaus happy just yet, klaus is sick idk, references to past character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:41:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27179389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crystalrainwing/pseuds/superdino
Summary: Four gets sick. Some of the things he says are... worrying to say the least.(Takes place just after chapter 3 of Somebody Catch My Breath)
Relationships: Nova Artino | Nightmare & Klaus Hargreeves
Series: Nothing’s Gonna Scare Us Now [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1976722
Comments: 10
Kudos: 32





	1. Won't You Stay Inside?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wellihaz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wellihaz/gifts).



> hello idk what this is but I wrote it :) wrote it in one sitting which I’m kinda proud of but also means it’s trash ✌🏻 enjöy

Nova was carrying Four.

She was trying not to think about how light he was, how thin his clothes were, the way he shivered in her arms.

It wasn’t working.

Snow fell, slow and heavy, coating the dirty sidewalks in thick white. Her footsteps were the only ones marring the crisp surface.

Four’s should have been next to hers. He let out a little whimper, and it made her heart skip a beat. So different, now, than it had been when she’d sort-of-kidnapped him; he was her little sibling now and even if he wouldn’t accept help normally, this was - it was bad. He couldn’t even tell her to fuck off, so - he must be really sick. 

The air was cold, but his flushed skin was so hot. 

Nova broke into a run, slipping in the wet snow. 

One step. She was holding Four, snow dusting her black hoodie and soaking through her jeans and socks. 

Another step. She was small, and Evie’s tiny body was clutched in her arms, her face flushed as she wailed. Evie was sick again.

Four. 

Evie. 

She’d failed once. She wouldn’t fail again.

Finally, finally, but all at once, she reached the subway. It wasn’t much warmer, but it was out of the wind and the snow. Four was too out of it to notice, though his eyes were open. They were green, she noticed. Probably looked nicer when they weren’t clouded by fever.

She was in their part of the subway now.

She was setting down Four on his bed now, gently covering him with a blanket. 

At some point, she must’ve gotten herself a blanket, or maybe Ingrid had grabbed one for her. She was warm, could feel her fingers again. 

Nova reached out and rested her hand in Four’s curls, gently running her hands through his hair. It’s damp with sweat, and if this were anyone else that would make her snatch her hand away instantly, but this is  _ Four,  _ the only one not scared to touch her. Her powers don’t scare him. She can do this tiny thing for him.

He seems to like it, tipping his head towards her slightly. 

“Dave?”

Nova’s eyebrows drew together. He’d never mentioned a Dave before. 

“Dave, am I sick? Where are we?”

“Four, it’s - it’s Nova.”

He didn’t seem to hear past the part where she said his name. A tiny whimper escaped him and he jerked away from her hand. “No, no, I - I have a name now! It’s real!”

_ What?  _ No time to deal with that, he was her first concern for now.

“Shut up! Shut up, please, I can’t help you! No, no, please…”

“No one’s talking, Four. It’s - it’s just me. Please, look at me.”

His eyes were glassy, staring straight ahead. He kept flinching and shivering, like he was seeing something she couldn’t…

Oh. 

Fuck. 

With so little control over his mind, he must not be able to keep the ghosts away anymore, and - the way he was talking, this sounded like one of his nightmares. Oh, god.

He started to twist in the covers, panting heavily and plastering his hair to his forehead as he pressed his face into the pillow. Nova reached out a hand, then let it fall back to her side - with how he’d jerked away before, touch probably wasn’t the best thing right now.

“Hey? Hey, F- uh, kid? You’re okay. You’re in the subway with me, uh, with Nova, and you’re safe.” He didn’t react to her words.

She kept talking gently to him, but it didn’t seem to help. 

A few minutes later, he started to scream - some of it was words, mostly ‘no’ and ‘please’ and ‘I can’t,’ but a lot of it was just - screaming. It was awful, so awful, but she couldn’t leave him here  _ alone  _ with the spirits. This was obviously worse for him, anyways, she was in no position to complain.

Not long after, his throat must’ve been too raw to scream, and instead he just made awful rasping sounds. 

After what felt like forever and not very long at all, he turned over and opened his eyes again. They were unfocused and glazed, wandering slowly over the room. 

“Dave?”   
His voice was light, unconcerned - the way a kid’s voice should be, yet so different from his normally false lightness. Really, she hadn’t noticed it was fake until now; he just - sounded so  _ different.  _

“Dave, what’s going on? I - my head, it feels weird.”

“Uh, Dave isn’t here. It’s Nova. Remember?”

“Nova?” His eyes finally, finally stopped wandering and focused on her face. She gave him a little smile.

“Feeling any better?”

Four burst into tears. 

Ok. This was - this was unexpected, but she could deal with it. Definitely. What do - how - how do you comfort someone who’s crying? In books they patted people’s backs, but his back was against the bed. His shoulder, then.

She patted his shoulder awkwardly. “It’s, uh, okay?”

This only made him cry harder. 

_ Well, fuck me. _

“Um, it  _ will  _ be okay?”

That didn’t seem to help either. 

“No, no, he - he - he’s dead, Nova, a - a - ah - and I’ll ne - he - e - ever see him again!” Four said through his tears. 

Well, that was something she understood, at least. “Oh. I’m sorry, uh, that sucks.”

Four let out a tiny, sad laugh before he continued to sob. It was kinda gross, really, he was not a pretty crier. “Yeah, yea - yeah, it does. It do - ho - oes!”

Nova didn’t have anything to say to that. She patted his shoulder again. 

He eventually cried himself to sleep, and Nova was left with a  _ lot  _ of things to think about.

  
  
  



	2. Part Two - It's Cold and I Don't Wanna be Lonely (So Show Me the Way Home)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Klaus and Nova talk about a certain someone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to totally scrap the first draft of this but. hope u enjoy.

Nova sat next to Four’s bed, waiting for him to wake up. She was pretty sure that he was finally healed - she’d kept him knocked out for the past couple days so that he could get better without having to feel the sickness. 

It had nothing to do with he she’d felt when he was screaming. Nothing at all.

Apparently, it felt weird to wake up after being knocked out by her powers, and she was a little afraid of how it would feel for Four after being asleep for so long. She’d never kept someone asleep for that long before. No one else let her touch them.

Not that he’d had a choice, but she knew that he was okay with that. (Probably. Oh, God, had she made a mistake? Would he still trust her?)

She was pulled out of her spiraling thoughts by a groan next to her. “Christ on a cracker, Ben, what the hell did I take?” What?

He paused, his eyes still closed, probably hearing Ben’s response; after a minute he turned to her. “Hi, Nova.” His eyes - they were guarded, shuttered, not as open as she was used to and she felt her heart drop.

“Hey, Four.”

There - again - a flicker when she said his name (not his name?). Nova couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed it before.

Nova swallowed nervously. “So. Are you feeling better?”

He squinted at her. “My head feels fucking  _ weird  _ but otherwise I’m fine.”

“That’s good.” She looked away, twisting her hands into her hoodie. “So.”

“So?”

“So you said some things while you had a fever.”

And she’d thought that his eyes were closed off before. She could practically  _ feel  _ his walls come up. 

“Oh, I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about, Nova dearest.”

“No, Four, it  _ is  _ something to worry about. You need to talk about this stuff. I don’t care if it’s with me, but it’s not going to help anyone if you just - bottle it up.”

Four snorted and waved his hand dismissively. “I sure can, been doing it for thir- uh, thirteen years now.”

Nova gently set her hand on his arm. “I know. But you don’t have to anymore.”

He looked away.

“Who’s Dave?”

Nova could feel his almost-suppressed flinch. When he sighed, it clouded in front of his face like smoke.

“Dave… We fought together in the A Shau Valley, in the Mountain of the Crouching Beast.”

“What? Fought?” There weren’t any places she knew of with those names, not that she knew much geography, and he was too young to have been in the Battle for Gatlon. Maybe he came from somewhere really far away? 

It made sense. That was why he never talked about his siblings, why he didn’t have a home. Why was he here, then?

_ The Renegades,  _ her mind whispered, and she shot it down. Didn’t make sense. He didn’t know who the Renegades or the Anarchists were when he first got here, so it must be somewhere far away. 

Maybe it was - maybe he’d been in a war, far away, and came to the first place he saw to escape. 

If she would’ve looked at Four’s face, she would have seen guilt and panic flicker across for a moment before he smoothed it out. 

“Where - where I came from… there was a war. Ended up there by total accident, but Dave, he helped me, showed me what to do.” His voice was shaky, but fond. Nova felt dread creeping up on her. The end of this story wasn’t going to be good.

“And I was foolish enough to follow him all the way to the front lines.”

_ No, no… _

“I think you can figure out what happened after that, Nova.”

“I’m sorry, Four. It’s - it’s hard losing someone you love. He sounds like he took good care of you.”   
Four let out a choked laugh. “He wasn’t, like, a second dad. He was - he was my age. We - I loved him, Nova. The first person I loved more than myself.”

That didn’t sound right. Four was full of love, just a bit too damaged to show it. It was the way he’d grown up that made him selfish. That didn’t mean he didn’t love other people… really, from what he’d seen, he didn’t love himself so much as prioritize survival. 

She didn’t say so. “He sounds like, uh, a really special guy.” If you asked  _ her,  _ Four was a bit too young for romance, but the heartbreak in his voice - well, even if they were only 13 or so, they’d loved each other.

“Yeah, he… he really was.”

She didn’t ask why he couldn’t summon Dave’s ghost.

He didn’t ask why she’d sounded like she knew what it was like to lose someone. 

They sat there until eventually, Four sighed and got out of bed. “I’m okay now. I’ve got a business to run, Nova, if you’ll excuse me…?”

She didn’t want to. God, she really didn’t want to let him leave so soon after he recovered. But she didn’t want to trap him, so she just smirked at him and let him past. “Don’t get sick again, or I’ll have to drag your dumb ass back here.”

He gave her a lazy salute before leaving, and she watched until he rounded a corner and she couldn’t see him anymore.

Footsteps behind her - sounded like Ingrid.

“All better now, huh?”

Yep. Definitely Ingrid.

“Yeah.”

“He can’t replace your sister, you know.”

Nova didn’t say anything.

Ingrid’s footsteps retreated.

He wouldn’t replace Evie (no one could replace Evie), but she could keep him safe the way she hadn’t been able to protect her sister.   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tell me what u thought!! this wasn’t a planned story so it’s kinda weird, would u guys (there’s like 2 of u ily) like more stories like this or more that contribute to the main plot??

**Author's Note:**

> second part? yes? no?


End file.
